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  <title>Donate to the Boost C++ Libraries</title>
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              <h1>Donate to the Boost C++ Libraries</h1>
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            <div class="section-body">
              <p>According to <a href=
              "https://www.openhub.net/p/boost/estimated_cost">OpenHub's
              Boost page</a>, as of August 2014 there are 14.2 million lines
              of code in Boost. Given the high quality of coding needed to
              pass Boost's community review process, and the extensive unit
              and functional testing required, a cost of US$20/line is not
              unreasonable. By that metric, the Boost C++ Libraries would
              cost US$284 million to rewrite from scratch in a commercial
              organization.</p>

              <p>If you want more of the same, please donate generously. We
              will use donations to fund Boost infrastructure, help finance
              <a href="http://cppnow.org/">the annual C++ Now conference</a>,
              and help fund students to work on Boost code without having to
              worry as much about finding the time or money to do so. You
              should be aware we may also use donations for any other purpose
              the Boost steering committee feels appropriate, and that ten
              percent (10%) of your donation after Paypal's fees will go to
              <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software Freedom
              Conservancy</a>. Software Freedom Conservancy is a
              not-for-profit organization that helps promote, improve,
              develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
              (FLOSS) projects.</p>
              <!--#include virtual="donatebutton.inc" -->

              <h2>Why ask for donations for the first time in fifteen
              years?</h2>

              <p>Boost was not generated, for the most part, by any
              commercial organization. It is available in the public interest
              as one of the purest forms of open source: its license,
              <a href="/LICENSE_1_0.txt">the Boost
              Software License</a>, is highly permissive and allows
              unrestricted commercial use. Most of the code was written,
              documented and tested in the spare and family time of some of
              the very best C++ engineers in the world, many of whom are also
              involved in the ISO C++ standardization process. Many of the
              additions to the C++ 11 standard library started life in the
              Boost libraries, and so will many of the additions and changes
              to the next C++ standard library.</p>

              <p>Yet, for its first fifteen years, Boost has never asked for
              donations of money from its users. So why begin now?</p>

              <p>As Boost grows, more time and resources is being spent on
              dealing with the size and complexity of Boost, especially as
              libraries are transitioned to make full use of the new language
              features in C++ 11/14. If you wish to support those efforts to
              bring more Boost libraries into first tier support for the
              latest generation of C++, please donate generously.</p>
              <!--#include virtual="donatebutton.inc" -->

              <h2>Why you should donate with a recurring monthly
              donation</h2>

              <p>Boost has participated in <a href=
              "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code">Google's
              Summer of Code</a> since 2007. This is an annual student open
              source programming stipend program lasting three months during
              which experienced Boost developers mentor students who work on
              improving Boost libraries, usually in all the boring, thankless
              stuff none of us like to do. The problem with the three month
              duration is that the student is only just getting familiar
              enough with the Boost libraries to really ramp up their
              productivity and rate of output when the program ends. This
              leads to these outcomes:</p>

              <ul>
                <li>We don't reap the full rewards of what we should given
                the substantial investment in mentoring our developers invest
                into students each year.</li>

                <li>The student is just getting into the Boost libraries when
                they need to return to concentrating on their studies, and
                often back to the part time work needed to finance the high
                expense of university study nowadays.</li>

                <li>Students, when they graduate, get pulled into the
                development of proprietary rather than open source software,
                or they end up gravitating to one of the many open source
                projects much better at running a student-to-developer
                pipeline than Boost historically has been.</li>
              </ul>

              <p>Whatever the case, Boost is not benefiting as it should from
              enthusiastic students with great ideas about where C++ should
              go next, and we hope that <em>you</em> can help us change
              that.</p>

              <p>So, if you or your company or organization has benefited
              from the Boost C++ Libraries, or you would like to assist
              promising young C++ engineers develop their talents to the
              full, please strongly consider making a regular monthly
              donation to Boost! Please donate generously. Thank you in
              advance!</p><!--#include virtual="donatebutton.inc" -->
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        <p>Revised $Date: 2014-08-25 01:40:46 +0100 (Mon, 25 Aug 2014) $</p>
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        <p>Copyright Beman Dawes, David Abrahams, 1998-2005.</p>

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